3870 to 5850. Worthwhile?

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Is it a significant jump. I guess to be worth it I need to get some money out of my 3870.

Another thing I want to know is if at load is the 5850 quieter than a 3870.
 
Big jump for sure. My bro had a 3870 a year ago, and when I saw it run cod4, it lagged at times, and he didnt have max settings. He bought a 4870 and saw a big improvement. 5850 is an improvement over 4870 for sure. Do it now! You will be lucky to get $50 for a 3870 really.
 
My buddies 5850 is pretty quiet but here again he went from a dual 4850 CF setup. I would say its quieter then the 3870 and a heck of a lot faster. Basically GTX285 performance at a better price. Not to mention these things overclock very well.
 
5850 is plenty quiet. I'd say my PSU is the loudest thing in my case... mind you my CPU cooler is a corsair h50 kit (very happy with it)
 
Is it a significant jump. I guess to be worth it I need to get some money out of my 3870.

Another thing I want to know is if at load is the 5850 quieter than a 3870.

Like everyone has said, yes the HD5850 would be a huge leap, BUT depending on what the rest of your system specs are, you may or may need see as much gain as some people do. Basically I'm saying is what system are you running?
 
You should see some performance increases, but as it was said before the degree of that improvement will depend on your system specs and what resolution you run.

As far as the noise level goes, the anand review I read for it showed the idle noise to be same as 3870, but the load noise level was louder. You can check out the graphs here:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3650&p=13

I was so happy that they included the 3870 in their comparison! Now if I could just get a 3870x2 compared....
 
The 3870 isn't worth much these days especially with the coming 5770 which will drop the price of every low end 4xxx card that is between it and the 3870.
 
I would assume a 5770 would suit you fine also.
if you like overclocking it does well for some extra speed.
the 5770 is like a 4870/4890 with new technology, and is like twice the power of your 3870.
a 5850 is much likely gonna last a long time also for you.
The 5770 also might suit your wallet better also.
 
Need more Info

System Specs? Display Res? Any additional upgrades in the near future?
 
I just upgraded from a 3870 to a 4890 and still on a 939 Opteron and the difference was huge. As soon I as upgrade the rest of my system to an i7 it will only get bigger.
 
My 8800 was bottle necked on a 939 system. I don't even want to think about 4890. Get on that i7!
 
Trust me bro its coming, for awhile I was stuck between choosing the 860 vs 920. Now after seeing the reported issues with 1156 sockets on some boards. I'm going to go with 920 D0 route now I just need to decide on what is the best air cooler to use on that setup.
 
Jumping from an HD 3870 to a HD 4870 gives you between 2.5 times up to 4 times more performance in games, specially when Anti Aliasing is used, so going to a HD 5850 in a case that you are not CPU limited can give you 1.6 times additional performance, which in total can be an average of between 3.6 and up to 5.6 times more performance, which is eye popping.

The HD 3870 isn't a bad card ( I used to own an overclocked HD 3850 512MB), but the performance isn't great in current games at all, my dad and brother in law have the HD 3870 and can play most games on high with good performance, but they can't turn Anti Aliasing on all of them because those games become unplayable. With my card, I can crank up the Anti Aliasing in any game that I want and it will run smooth as butter, now imagine what can you do with an HD 5850.
 
Yes AA is broken on the 3xxx series cards, it has to do it with shaders and not in hardware. So aslong as you kept AA off performance was good.
 
IF you play games that are 5 - 10 years old @ 1280x1024 then it won't be worth it. How about telling us what games you play and what resolution your monitor is.
 
Trust me bro its coming, for awhile I was stuck between choosing the 860 vs 920. Now after seeing the reported issues with 1156 sockets on some boards. I'm going to go with 920 D0 route now I just need to decide on what is the best air cooler to use on that setup.

Prolimatech Megahalems. Accept no substitute! :D
 
I was looking at the Prolimatech Megahalem also Noctua NH-U12P SE2. I know the Noctua will be abit quieter but I have a fan controller that I plan to use on this build. And Kyle so happend to post the article today on the new revision TRUE so that is now in the picture. The mounting system on the Noctua was a big nod in its direction also.

On a side note...

I just found the 920 D0 in stock for about $314 CDN...so i'm buying this ASAP.



This is gonna be my first Intel build since a Pentium II... Been AMD ever since :D
 
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